News

Professor Tim McDaniels (UBC) will speak about “A yawning governance gap that degrades regional infrastructure resilience” at the M9 All-Hands Meeting on Tuesday, February 9. M9 Meetings are held from 2:30-3:30 PM in Molecular Engineering room 115.
Read more about Tim’s work on his website.

The University of Washington is among West Coast universities awarded new funding for earthquake early warning systems, announced Feb. 2 as part of a White House Earthquake Resilience Summit.
The UW-based Pacific Northwest Seismic Network is helping to develop ShakeAlert, an automated alert system that could save lives and prevent millions of dollars in damages by providing seconds to minutes of warning before shaking begins.

A University of Washington seismologist is participating in a White House summit Tuesday that will focus on national earthquake preparedness. The event will be webcast live from 9:30 a.m. to 1:15 p.m. Pacific time.
Sally Jewell, secretary of the Department of the Interior, and John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, are scheduled to give the introductory remarks.

The large, fast-moving mudslide that buried much of Oso, Washington in March 2014 was the deadliest landslide in U.S. history. Since then it’s been revealed that this area has experienced major slides before, but it’s not known how long ago they occurred.
University of Washington geologists analyzed woody debris buried in earlier slides and used radiocarbon dating to map the history of activity at the site.

Unlike some natural disasters that we can depend on arriving at our doorstep every year—hurricanes, tornados, fires—earthquakes can be out of sight and out of mind because of their relative infrequency. But when the Big One strikes, it could be a real catastrophe for the Pacific Northwest coast, deeply disrupting the lives and economies throughout the region.
John Vidale, professor of Earth and Space Sciences and chief seismologist for the State of Washington, wants people to be aware of the threats.

The UW’s John Vidale is a man of many titles—professor of Earth and Space Sciences, director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, and Washington state seismologist. More recently, Vidale helped launch the university’s M9 Project, a cross-disciplinary effort whose goal is to reduce the catastrophic potential effects of a Cascadia megathrust earthquake.
Earlier this year, an article in the New Yorker stirred up panic nationwide over the looming possibility of megaquake along the Cascadia Fault.

Shelley Chestler, UW seismology graduate student
The July 2015 New Yorker article “The Really Big One,” by Kathryn Schulz, shook up the Pacific Northwest (PNW) more than any earthquake has since the Magnitude-6.8 Nisqually earthquake in 2001. In the article’s most dooming statement, the head of the Cascadia FEMA division was quoted saying, “everything west of I-5 will be toast.” This assertion scared the living daylights out of PNW residents, creating a sense of terror and hopelessness that was the antithesis of what the article meant to do: to spur the region into preparing for this potentially devastating event.

More than ever before, people—emergency responders, media, and the public—are turning to social media to communicate important information during times of crises, both natural and manmade. Whether to articulate their own whereabouts to friends and family after a disaster has occurred or to offer up help to others in need, connected crowds are wading through noise and rumors that persist online to assist in the aftermath of tragedy.

Former Marine Jake Wood didn’t stop serving when he returned from deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Today, he serves fellow veterans and communities in crises across the globe. Wood is the co-founder and CEO Team Rubicon, a nonprofit that works with military veterans to respond in the immediate aftermath of natural hazards—before conventional aid organizations arrive.
A CEO, author, and former U.S.